"The American title — Big Deal on Madonna Street — must be the worst of the international variants for Mario Monicelli’s brilliant incompetent-caper comedy, said to be the absurd version of Rififi. The direct translation — Persons Unknown — used elsewhere, seems funnier once you’ve seen the film; the Spanish distributor had the wit to call it Rufufu and there it’s a treasured classic. The shooting style — the great use of the so-called “curtain effect” — has also been something we always try to put to use."

"I’d read Scorsese, Tarantino, and Jarmusch raving about Jean-Pierre Melville for years. Then I read how Paul Thomas Anderson’s brilliant first movie, Hard Eight, was an homage to Melville’s Bob le flambeur. I had to see one of his movies but couldn’t track them down at my local Tulsa video store. My first night in L.A., I walked down to the newly opened Cinephile video store and rented all of them! Le doulos is my favorite. It’s one tough-guy movie. Great ending!"

"One of my favorite newer movies. It’s always been my favorite, but I don’t know how to tell you why. It was brilliant. And it was brilliantly acted and I was entirely taken by surprise, and I was in love with Tim Robbins. I was just in love with Morgan [Freeman]. I loved them so deeply. I loved them heated so deeply that — I can’t speak eloquently about it, Kerr. I love to watch movies and I don’t sit around and take them apart, you know?"